Chương 197: B2 Chapter 196: The Notification

Meno was still stuck somewhere between denial and wanting to throw something. Calling Rina a honeytrap made everything they had done together feel retroactively worthless. Every conversation, every stupid argument about food, every time she had climbed into bed beside him, every moment that had seemed spontaneous now needed to be checked for hidden mechanics. Meno kept looking for another explanation, but all of them eventually hit the same wall. The JustrelaxPete detail was the part he could not get around.

Hyperion had traced the account to an elementary school teacher in Solena, which meant Rina had built the brother story around a random player Meno already remembered from his stream. That was too specific to dismiss as coincidence. Hyperion could still be lying. Meno just could not find a reason for it. Hyperion gained nothing from dragging Senfestra into his relationship disaster. The explanation sucked. It was still the one that fit.

Across from him, Xarr set his empty glass on the low table and settled deeper into the leather chair, already looking ready to move on.

"Your turn. We are ready for your product feedback. I am certain I don't have to explain the consequences if this was an elaborate joke. Hyperion is untouchable."

"Yeah, right. Except your robots are walking out of the factory on their own."

"Meno," Aurelia said.

"Anyway, I wasn't joking. Here is the breakdown. Take notes." Meno leaned forward with his forearms on his knees.

"I spent two hours on the flight here putting together the list. I can go into more detail, but I don't have any university degrees. Some of it I'd need to show in action." Nobody interrupted, so Meno started running through the patch notes.

"Overall, the frame is good. I breached the facility at speed, fought machines bigger than me, crashed multiple times, lost an arm, damaged a leg, burned the boosters constantly, and still finished the mission. Most of the problems come from weaker systems failing to keep up with the parts that actually work." From there he moved straight into what mattered most.

"The movement is easily the best thing about it. Once I stopped treating the Phantom like a giant person and started treating the feet, back, and hand boosters like separate movement skills, it became way stronger. I could cross firing lanes before enemies got follow-up shots, change angles before bigger frames finished turning, bait attacks into bad positions, and recover from approaches that should have failed. Keep the acceleration.

If somebody suggests slowing it down so it is easier to control or survives more hits, ignore them. It wins because it is faster." Xarr gave him nothing, but Meno did not need feedback yet. He had the floor.

"The legs are the first thing that started annoying me. The boosters can move the Phantom harder than the default leg movement seems designed around, so it keeps trying to turn everything back into normal running and normal landings. Sometimes I do not want a normal landing. I want to touch down, skid, kick off sideways, or use the ground for half a second before boosting again. Let the pilot control that more directly. If I put the foot somewhere stupid and fall over, that is my problem.

Do not limit the good part of the machine because somebody might press the wrong button." Meno stood before continuing. Xarr's eyes followed him into an open section of floor between the seating area and the nearest aquarium. Meno kicked off his shoes, set them beside the sofa, then rose onto the balls of his feet and started shifting from one leg to the other without ever planting a heel. His right foot touched while the left knee came up, then the pattern reversed.

Instead of bouncing straight from side to side, Meno cut diagonally, changing direction every step while keeping his weight forward. He could exit off either foot without having to settle his stance first.

"See? This movement is critical because I can pivot any direction without the opponent easily guessing it. I can also allow myself to fall into it sideways and engage the foot thrusters while skidding on the ground. It's very flexible." He dropped lower and repeated the pattern from a partial crouch. His knees came higher now, and the weight transfer became more aggressive, less like ordinary footwork and more like a chain of unstable launches that never settled long enough for the next direction to become obvious.

"Key VR tech. You don't want to plant your feet during high-speed gameplay. You become predictable and bleed speed." Meno stopped, put his shoes back on, and returned to the sofa without giving Xarr a chance to redirect the conversation.

"The hand boosters are also cracked, but I ended up using them for everything. Turning, braking, catching falls, correcting direction, changing attack angles, getting airborne again. Then I actually needed the hands for punching, grabbing, or carrying something and suddenly half my movement kit was occupied. Put weaker correction boosters somewhere on the body so the hands are extra control instead of mandatory control. Right now it feels like one skill is taking six action-bar slots."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Combat came next, because that was where the lack of dedicated tools had forced Meno to start making up abilities himself.

"I understand why the Phantom does not carry some giant cannon. Good choice. Do not change that. But once I got detected, my options became run away or start beating enemies with the Phantom itself. I shoulder-checked one machine, punched others, ripped a leg off something and used that, then physically hit flying units with the frame. It worked because the Phantom is fast, but it was totally wrecked by the end. It needs a skill, maybe detachable finger drills or something like that."

Meno flexed his fingers while thinking back through the run.

"Also, the core is way tougher than the parts I actually used to hit things. The body survived almost everything I did to it, while the hand started failing and eventually I lost an arm. If the Phantom stays mostly unarmed, fists, forearms, shoulders, knees, and feet are weapon slots whether you intended that or not. Reinforce those specific areas. Do not make the entire machine heavier, that's a troll. Reduce the core to compensate if you need to keep the same total weight."

The way damage propagated through the Phantom was one of the things Meno did not want them ruining while fixing everything else.

"The durability after damage was very good. Losing the arm did not suddenly delete the whole run. Damaging one part made the Phantom worse instead of turning it into dead weight. Keep that. I would rather lose options as it breaks than carry more Plate with negative Action Speed just to make sure nothing ever does. And do not cut the booster reserve either. I used way more thrust than I was probably supposed to and still had enough to finish.

That reserve is part of what lets a pro turn movement into actual advantage." Meno finally brought it back to the underlying design problem.

"The Phantom feels like somebody built a very high-skill frame and then got scared casuals would not know what to do with it. There is too much handholding in places where I want more control, while other parts assume nobody will push hard enough for their weaknesses to matter. The winning part is already there. It has the potential to be IRL Swing Master. Build the rest of the machine around that instead of protecting the pilot from using it wrong." That was it.

Meno leaned back into the sofa and let Xarr process the damage. The old man had finally run out of easy explanations. Competitor coaching did not survive that level of detail. Random idiot streamer had been dead for several mechanics, and every minute made an elaborate prank harder to keep on the board. Whatever the Hyperion engineers were feeding Xarr through his earpiece, there was clearly a lot of it.

He sat through the noise for a while, then grabbed the Honeyjuice and finished the entire green glass in one pull.

"There are very few organizations capable of penetrating our systems deeply enough to reconstruct the Phantom," Xarr said.

"Only one of them specializes in stealing research." Damn. The old bastard was smarter than Meno had expected.

"You work for Morlando Felt."

"I have never signed a contract with anyone," Meno said.

"Whatever you people do to each other has nothing to do with us." Xarr watched him for another second.

"Call him. We have turned your phone back on." Technically, Meno had not lied about any of it. And if Hyperion inserted itself into whatever arrangement he had with Feltforge, the two corporations might keep each other from doing anything too stupid.

"Now," Xarr added.

"Before your little stunt causes an unnecessary escalation that benefits none of us." Aurelia glanced at Meno, but whatever warning she was considering died before reaching her mouth. Meno pulled out his phone and called Morlando.

"Hey, Morlando, my friend!" Meno said when he answered.

"It's PBG. I'm here with Xarr Darion. I don't know if you know him. How are you? Still having sex with your assistant, Sophie, was it?"

"What?!" Morlando snapped.

"That never happened." Karmabeast nearly folded in half trying not to laugh. Aurelia turned her face away, Thorn covered his mouth with one hand, and even Arayu abandoned the octopuses to watch with her lips pressed tight enough to puff out her cheeks. Everybody had enough raid experience to know laughing now could wipe the group in the final phase. Morlando went quiet for a moment, and when he answered, his voice had flattened completely.

"Xarr, are you there, or is this a prank call?"

"Drop the act, Felt," Xarr said.

"We are both well aware of what is going on here."

"Is that so?" Morlando asked.

"That's just too bad."

"Try to get over yourself," Xarr said.

"How do you propose we resolve this slight hiccup?" Morlando asked.

"Project Ganymede." There was another pause on the phone.

"You turned me down twice," Morlando said.

"Circumstances changed."

"I'm in." That fast. Meno had spent half the day trying to work out who was playing whom, and apparently two megacorporation bosses could resolve years of trying to screw each other in four sentences once enough money and stolen military hardware entered the room.

"I also want access to your next AI simulation," Xarr said.

"Privacy issues."

"Really, Felt? You know security comes first, and by the time we get to privacy, the budget is already out of scope."

"What about your current guests?" Morlando asked. Xarr looked across the lounge at Meno and the others.

"They volunteered to provide product feedback."

"I want the annoying one back. You can keep the rest." Karmabeast pointed silently at Meno, just in case anyone had trouble identifying the annoying one.

"They will remain under Hyperion clearance until we establish the extent of the breach," Xarr said.

"Once your next simulation provides enough verified data to formalize a joint program, their clearance can be transferred with it."

"That's going to take too long," Morlando said.

"The AI is still processing the data from the previous simulation, and then it has to build the next one."

"Then speed it up," Xarr said.

"Perhaps you can find someone on Streamline willing to provide product feedback." Meno caught Aurelia's eye. She had heard that one too.

"Hilarious," Morlando said.

"We should discuss the rest in person."

"We will. In the meantime, it would be a terrible shame if we detected further espionage attempts from your end. Those data centers of yours might experience an unexpected malfunction. Components these days are quite unreliable."

"Don't worry about that," Morlando said.

"You won't be able to detect anything." The call ended. For a moment, nobody in the lounge said anything. Xarr reached into his suit jacket and produced another vial, filled with white liquid this time. He poured it into the crystal glass and swallowed the mixture in one pull. Xarr turned his attention to Meno.

"Show me what you can do." Real life rarely provided direct feedback, but Meno's mind conjured the missing notification anyway. [World State Progression] The balance of power between Earth's megacorporations has been disrupted. Consequences: Unknown